My dear old things, it's STW TMS!

6 gone, into the tail, wishing I’d gone up to Birmingham today as I thought about doing

Nobody else following this? LOL, can’t believe they published my comment on cricinfo just now (should be obvious for those who know my real name, and almost as obvious as the complete piss take they’ve just published for those who don’t)

come on england, 9 for 9 trophies is beckoning !

Could go #1 in the Test rankings if we can draw or win the next one.

Now THAT was a proper test match! Great result, too. Obviously.

Aggers doing a fine job commentating on the Olympic eventing!

Arseflaps.

Not a good opening session.

For christs sake.

Good work from Moeen

I’m sure someone will still be saying that Moeen shouldn’t be in the team. A good recovery from 110-5

This is one hell of a series – nip and tuck every day.

Pakistan have lost an early wicket in pretty much every innings without it really effecting their concentration overall so I still think this could go either way.

England have some real issues to address before they play against big boys next summer. The winter won’t be all that helpful, either as the sub-continent is so unique, it is almost a different game. Thinking about the South Africans next year:

Hales – cheerio fella, sorry and all that, but hard handed biffing of the new ball belongs in 50 over (or less) cricket. He just isn’t a test player.

Vince – see above.

Broad – you’ve got to get your wrist behind the ball, mate. Apart from the odd inswinger, if you look at his bowling it is piss paced, straight up and down.

Finn – someone has to sort him out. His action has too many moving parts, is very non-linear and has a very short actual arm swing. Very much like Caddick used to be. Good-ish, but not great.

Ballance – I love the nuggety attitude and the nurdling the ball around, but someone really needs to take the lead-lining out of his boots.

Some big questions to address, but you cannot afford to carry two supposedly front-line batsmen against older boys. South Africa will be straining at the leash to get at Hales, who hasn’t been able to buy a run in this series.

Bell-Drummond to open. Opening for Kent with Tom Latham, an established international opener, he way out scored him.

who is next along to replace Vince and Ballance?

I think Ballance will keep his place especially if he does ok tomorrow. If Rashid comes in for the Indian tour and Stokes is fit then they just need to find an opener. Maybe they’ll drop Hales down the order but they bat so deep I think they could lose a specialist batsman. They won’t drop Broad yet but he and Anderson aren’t getting any younger.

who is next along to replace Vince and Ballance?

There’s the problem. Too much crash, bang, wallop cricket and we can’t produce anyone who can drop anchor or not make every edge go to slip like an Exocet. Boycs is like a stuck record a lot of the time, but he also talks an immense amount of sense. You can’t score runs in the hutch, simple. You get the impression that Hales likes to ‘get on top of the bowling’. Hmmmm. I’m an opening bowler who dreads having to bowl more than 25 overs in an innings. Someone like Hales opens the batting and plays some crowd shots, then smashes one to slip. I have one for twenty off five overs and the number three is in against the new conker. Who has won?

England top 5 in this series: Cook/Root 935 @ 66.78 Hales/Vince/Ballance 498 @ 22.63.

they are being carried! 🙄

Effectively three of the top five are passengers in the side. We’ve only got away with it because we bat down to nine and a half (the half being Broad) if Stokes is fit. I would like the management to cut their losses, pick a purely horses for courses touring squad, then start again next May. The real issue is that no one else seems to be smashing the door down to get in.

Vince has to be dropped as he makes the same mistake again and again. might be worth dropping Hales down the order as he I think offers a bit more than Ballance – both have shown a bit of graft but I think Hales offers a bit more. Bring in Rashid for Finn, move Moen to 5, Stokes come back to 6 and then you still bat down to 9.5 with Broad at ten and you have a fair bit of variation in your bowling attack. Missing opener? Dont know the county game well enough, but this 19 yr old kid at Lancashire must be worth a shot within a couple of years if he keeps going like he is now.

Maybe we should take Hameed now, he has just scored a second century in the Roses match – Tendulkar started at 16 afterall. Described by the Yorkshire captain as an old fashioned opener.

Second bloody ball!

Argh.

Whhhhhhammmy!

World records
EDIT:
Highest ODI score
Most boundaries
Most sixes by England
Hales highest England ODI score
Buttler fastest England ODI 50

Hopefully a career making innings by Hales rather than a fluke

Nice of them to do this for me on my birthday!

With any of the top 7 capable of that kind of batting (8-10 pretty handy too) this 1 day side is looking fantastic.

I was on a stupid bine ride and missed it. Outstanding! Hales was brilliant but 90 Off 22 balls!

92-4.

I should have stayed in bed.

I’ve been awake since 00:30 so glad of the early start on TMS

Oops.

Fantastic test! Really would like them to get a win against the big boys but glad it wasn’t us. Well played Bangladesh and England

Wow, nail-biting stuff

got up to see the denouement, a bit late as it happened. Turned on Sky to see ball tracker overturning the first (refused) lbw, then 2 balls later another. Job done.

Fantastic performance by Stokes but the lack of spin options worries me. However, if we want them to be effective spinners in the long term they need experience bowling. Catch 22 for the Chef.

Test spin bowling is all in the mind. We need a top spin coach in the set-up to work with them. Cook also needs to learn better fields to he spinners. No point having a long-on on the boundary when Rashid ragging it square past a RH batter.

Proper test match, waxing and waning tooing and froing. Sri Lankan crowds are mad 😆 I was listening to the radio and you heard a huge roar, What has happened asked the studio, just a single came the reply from the ground 😆

Test spin bowling is all in the mind. We need a top spin coach in the set-up to work with them. Cook also needs to learn better fields to he spinners. No point having a long-on on the boundary when Rashid ragging it square past a RH batter.

Correct. If you get a good specialist spin coach in, then Cook also needs to be in on all of the sessions as it is vital that he understands what the bowler wants to do – and vice versa.

And, sorry to say it, but yet again we have a wicketkeeper who is a good (very good in his case) batsman and a brilliant team man, but who is not great stood up to the stumps – where real wicketkeeping happens. I think Bairstow is great, but he seems to be struggling from the limited stuff I have seen so far.

Sri Lankan crowds are mad

Erm….

I’m a YJB fan, and he appears pretty competent when the fast bowlers are on, but it does seem he’s not great standing up. Not something he does huge amounts of, so hopefully he’ll improve, but given he’s worth his place as a batsman, having a more specialist keeper seems an obvious option – there are a few around who are far from incompetent holding a bat. I suppose it’s a balance of the side thing – at the moment we have the luxury of lots of all rounders, so we can field 3 specialist spinners and 3 top line fast bowlers, whilst still having a very long batting line up. But it seems we need that long batting line up, and if Cook doesn’t have confidence in his spinners then we need 3 seamers to provide the reverse swing option…

Not that I’m sure YJB’s performance made a huge difference to the success of the spinners – only one stumping and one catch he missed that I remember, and neither were easy chances.

CFH – he is right though………. 😀

as an ex-keeper – standing up is definitely the measure of a great keeper, but it’s just as hard to keep to spin as it is to bat against it, particularly on a raging bunsen. In some ways it’s harder for two reasons, you often lose sight of the ball behind the batsman, or his bat as he moves; second as we always say about spin getting the ball above the batter’s eyeline makes length tough to judge, and when keeping it’s always above his eyeline.

I just read an article that suggested a chance is worth ca 28 runs, to put it into context. Was a good article as well – suggesting that rather than rating bowlers by wickets taken / runs per wkt; instead they should rate them by chances / runs per chance. On the basis that if they play in a team that can’t catch, once the batter’s nicked it then it’s out of the bowler’s hands (and literally the fielders too!!) so why should they be penalised for other’s failings.

I’ve just watched the replay of the match. Bairstows only real mistake was down the leg side off Broad. I thought he kept well to the spinners.